Under a DACA amnesty, American taxpayers would be left with a $26 billion bill. About one in five DACA illegal aliens, after an amnesty, would end up on food stamps, while at least one in seven would go on Medicaid. Since DACA’s inception under Obama, more than 2,100 illegal aliens have been kicked off the program after it was revealed that they were either criminals or gang members. JOHN BINDER

Thursday, January 19, 2017

Obama's corporatist legacy: President Obama will leave behind plenty of populist rhetoric, but his record on economic policy is eight years of corporatism. For two terms, Obama grew the government's role in the economy, often in concert with big business, and usually to its benefit. If President-elect Trump was aided by the perception that Washington rigs the game in favor of the big guys, Obama's consistent corporatism is a key culprit. The phrase crony capitalism became popular on the Right during the Obama years, but it's a little off-target as a criticism of Obama. Crony capitalism connotes doing favors for friends and hurting enemies. Did some of that go on under Obama? Of course. (See the Clinton Global Initiative, for instance.) But mostly, Obama wasn't doling out quid-pro-quo goodies as much as he was creating an economic system — of more regulations, more mandates, more subsidies — that favored the big guys.

This will be Obama's legacy: A bigger federal government more entangled with big business than before, with more ability to pick winners and losers. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Obama's corporatist legacy

President Obamawill leave behind plenty of populist rhetoric, but his record on economic policy is eight years of corporatism.

For two terms, Obama grew the government's role in the economy, often in concert with big business, and usually to its benefit. If President-elect Trump was aided by the perception that Washington rigs the game in favor of the big guys, Obama's consistent corporatism is a key culprit.

The phrase "crony capitalism" became popular on the Right during the Obama years, but it's a little off-target as a criticism of Obama. Crony capitalism connotes doing favors for friends and hurting enemies. Did some of that go on under Obama? Of course. (See the Clinton Global Initiative, for instance.)

But mostly, Obama wasn't doling out quid-pro-quo goodies as much as he was creating an economic system — of more regulations, more mandates, more subsidies — that favored the big guys.

Obama's corporatist streak revealed itself early with his pick of Tim Geithner, a chief author of the Wall Street bailouts, as treasury secretary. In crafting the Troubled Asset Relief Program under President Bush and implementing it under President Obama, Geithner wasn't simply trying to stop panic and ward off a meltdown. He was trying to make sure the post-crisis financial sector looked a lot like the pre-crisis one. That is, Geithner wasn't just trying to save the economy, he was trying to save the big banks.

Big banks have many virtues. An economy without Bank of America and Wells Fargo, and with a smaller JP Morgan would lack some things. It also might be a financial sector less in danger of systemic meltdown, and with more competition. Geithner probably saw that trade-off, but he thought the liquidity and the particular type of stability provided by the big guys was too important to give up.

Obama and Geithner's bailouts and regulations helped widen the moat that protects the big guys from competition, and helped make the big banks more or less immortal. It would be easy to call it Wall Street cronyism, but financial corporatism is more precise.

Obama's stimulus, in his second month, was a giant raft of subsidies for everyone from the concrete pourers to the computer makers to the solar-panel peddlers. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce endorsed this massive spending bill.

Obamacare was another exercise in corporatism. Hammered out in the back room with the drug lobby and the hospital lobby, Obamacare directly (and perhaps deliberately) has driven consolidation among hospitals and insurers. The law includes subsidies for hospitals, mandates to buy private insurance, plus protections and subsidies for drug companies. No wonder the drug lobby celebrated the law's passage and pledged money to re-elect Democratic senators who voted for it. No wonder insurers and hospitals defended it in court.

Obama in 2012 ran for re-election with a mantra "General Motors is Alive and Osama bin Laden is Dead." This was a striking embrace of corporatism and militarism from a Nobel Peace Prize winner who had originally run against "the special interests."

That election, Obama's economic platform was called "Economic Patriotism," a phrase that may ring a bell these days. Unlike Trump, Obama's "economic patriotism" didn't involve tariffs. Instead he promised a nickel-and-dime tax hike: ending the deductibility of moving expenses for companies that offshore jobs. And Obama was at least as generous as Trump promises to be with the goodies for U.S. manufacturers, including bailouts, loan guarantees and special tax breaks.

Obama's biggest legislative victory of his final two years was the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank. This is a federal agency that subsidizes U.S. exporters by extending taxpayer-backed finance to foreign buyers of U.S. goods. Obama pitches this as a small-business agency, but Boeing sales get twice as much Ex-Im financing as exports by all U.S. small businesses combined.

It wasn't just give, give, give by Obama. These subsidies and protective regulations empowered Obama to ask a lot, too, and to steer the economy. Obama used Ex-Im and the stimulus to reward "green energy" firms and punish coal companies. Giving hospitals bigger profit margins allows the government to grab more of that money. Forcing everyone to buy what Blue Cross is selling allows Obama to turn these companies into appendages of the Health and Human Services Department.

This will be Obama's legacy: A bigger federal government more entangled with big business than before, with more ability to pick winners and losers. I wonder if any future president might abuse that increased power.

Wikileaks exposes Obama’s bankster-infested

administration!

BARACK OBAMA …… the banksters’ RENT BOY!

“Citigroup’s recommendations came just
three days after then-President George W. Bush signed into law the
Troubled Asset Relief Program, which allocated $700 billion
in taxpayer money to rescue the largest Wall Street banks. The single
biggest beneficiary was Citigroup, which was given $45 billion
in cash in the form of a government stock purchase, plus a $306
billion government guarantee to back up its worthless mortgage-related
assets.”

“As president, Obama not
only funneled trillions of dollars to the banks, he saw to it that not a
single leading Wall Street executive faced prosecution for

the orgy of speculation and
swindling that led to the financial collapse and Great Recession, and
he personally intervened to block legislation capping

executive pay at bailed-out
firms.”

“So
when Clinton was hobnobbing with Goldman Sachs CEO Blankfein in 2013,
while investigations of wrongdoing by Goldman and the other
Wall Street banks were still ongoing, she was consorting with a man
who belonged in prison.”

NO PRESIDENT IN HISTORY SUCKED IN MORE BRIBES FROM BANKSTERS
NOR INFESTED HIS ADMIN WITH BANKSTER CRONIES MORE THAN OBAMA!

And
while the Obama administration worked systematically to bail out the banks and
make the financial oligarchy richer than ever, shielding the architects of the
Great Recession from criminal prosecution, it did impose fines for some of the
banks’ grossest swindles, including the sale of worthless subprime
mortgage-backed securities, the rigging of key global interest rates such as
the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), drug money laundering, illegal home
foreclosures and other illicit activities.

Obama golfed 333 times, most since Ike: President Obama earned his title as golfer in chief over eight years, becoming the first duffer who spent the most time on the greens since former President Dwight D. Eisenhower. CBS White House reporter Mark Knoller, who keeps an accurate database on presidential movements and actions, said Obama has golfed 333 times during his eight years, the last few outings in Hawaii during the first family's Christmas vacation last month. AP Photo While many presidents since Eisenhower have golfed a lot, only Obama has come close to the estimated 800 times the World War II hero hit the links.

"Overall, share prices and profits of the big Wall Street banks are soaring, fueled by expectations of sharply higher profits under a new administration pledged to dismantle the 2010 Dodd-Frank bank regulatory overhaul and remove virtually all regulations restricting speculative activity and protecting investors and the general public from Wall Street fraud."US banks report massive fourth quarter profits

By Gabriel Black16 January 2017

Profits for the two largest US banks by assets surged in the fourth quarter, reflecting a rise in trading activity following the election victory of Donald Trump.

JPMorgan Chase profits increased 24 percent to $6.7 billion, while the bank’s revenue rose two percent to $24.3 billion, according to the quarterly earnings report released by the bank on Friday. The bank reported its best-ever fourth quarter trading business. It net income jumped 96 percent from a year earlier.

Bank of America’s fourth quarter profit shot up by 42 percent to $4.7 billion. The second largest US bank’s revenue climbed 2.1 percent to $20 billion, the result of a gain in interest income and loan growth.

Earnings for the country’s fourth largest bank by assets, Wells Fargo, fell 5.4 percent to $5.3 billion and revenue remained flat in the wake of a scandal over the bank’s practice of opening unauthorized customer accounts in order to meet aggressive sales targets.

Combined 2016 profits for Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo totaled $64.6 billion, some two percent higher than in 2015.

Overall, share prices and profits of the big Wall Street banks are soaring, fueled by expectations of sharply higher profits under a new administration pledged to dismantle the 2010 Dodd-Frank bank regulatory overhaul and remove virtually all regulations restricting speculative activity and protecting investors and the general public from Wall Street fraud.

The incoming Trump administration is also promising to sharply cut corporate taxes and personal income taxes for the wealthy. Its key economic posts are filled with Wall Street insiders, including Goldman Sachs alums named to at least five top positions. These include Steven Mnuchin as treasury secretary, Gary Cohn as director of the National Economic Council, and longtime Goldman lawyer Jay Clayton to head the Securities and Exchange Commission.

US financial stocks have been on a tear since the November 8 election, with total gains for the 63 largest groups hitting $459 billion. The financial sector has headed up a general surge in stock prices, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average increasing 8.9 percent since Election Day and nearing the 20,000 mark. The US stock market is now valued at $26 trillion, the highest in history.

The Dodd-Frank law is a largely token measure that has done virtually nothing to rein in the type of speculative and fraudulent activity that led to the 2008 Wall Street crash. Nevertheless, the big US banks have denounced it and lobbied against provisions that require them to maintain a bigger capital reserve and others that minimally restrict their ability to gamble with depositors’ money.

And while the Obama administration worked systematically to bail out the banks and make the financial oligarchy richer than ever, shielding the architects of the Great Recession from criminal prosecution, it did impose fines for some of the banks’ grossest swindles, including the sale of worthless subprime mortgage-backed securities, the rigging of key global interest rates such as the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), drug money laundering, illegal home foreclosures and other illicit activities.

Now the banks are confident they will not even face such token reprimands for their reckless and often criminal pursuit of super-profits.

Trump is also expected to offer massive tax breaks to companies that invest in government-sponsored infrastructure projects. A spurt in growth and an anticipated rise in interest rates promise to increase the opportunities for the banks to realize higher returns.

This Trump boom will make the inevitable bursting of the stock bubble that much more violent. The fundamentals of the European, East Asian and American economies remain weak, with very low rates of reinvestment.

The massive profits reported by the American banks contrast sharply with the situation in Europe. The total profits of the three largest US banks for 2016, $65 billion, exceeds the combined market value of Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse, two of the largest European banks.

This reflects a sharp decline in the position of European banks relative to their US rivals in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. Share prices for major European banks such as the Royal Bank of Scotland, Deutsche Bank, Barclays and UniCredit are below their pre-2008 levels.

HSBC laundered hundreds of millions and perhaps

billions of dollars for drug cartels responsible for

the deaths of tens of thousands of people over the

past two decades. The bank transferred at least

$881 million of known drug trafficking

proceeds, including money from the Sinaloa Cartel

in Mexico, which is known for dismembering

its victims and publicly displaying their body parts.

THE DEMISE AND ULTIMATE DESTRUCTION of HILLARY CLINTON

"Hillary Clinton is a known liar, a criminal of monstrous proportions; others have gone to prison for crimes she has committed over and over: lying to Congress, lying to the FBI, violating national security laws by which she was bound as Secretary of State, etc. It's a long list."

Clinton, the candidate favored by most of Wall Street and the corporate elite and large sections of the Republican Party establishment, is seeking to assemble something akin, within the framework of the US political setup, to a grand coalition between the Democratic Party and the Republican leadership.

Transcripts released by WikiLeaks of Clinton speeches to Wall Street bankers, for which shereceived six-figure paychecks, show her praising the recommendations of the 2010 Simpson-Bowles deficit-reduction commission, which called for sweeping cuts toSocial Security, Medicare and Medicaid; the elimination of 200,000 federal jobs; a tax on employees’ health benefits; and huge cuts in income taxes for the wealthy and corporate taxes.

“But what the Clintons do is criminal because they do it wholly at the expense of the American people. And they feel thoroughly entitled to do it: gain power, use it to enrich themselves and their friends. They are amoral, immoral, and venal. Hillary has no core beliefs beyond power and money. That should be clear to every person on the planet by now.”

Wikileaks exposes Obama’s bankster-infested

administration!

BARACK OBAMA …… the banksters’ RENT BOY! “Citigroup’s recommendations came just three days after then-President George W. Bush signed into law the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which allocated $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue the largest Wall Street banks. The single biggest beneficiary was Citigroup, which was given $45 billion in cash in the form of a government stock purchase, plus a $306 billion government guarantee to back up its worthless mortgage-related assets.”

MUCH MORE HERE:

“As president, Obama not only funneled trillions of dollars to the banks, he saw to it that not a single leading Wall Street executive faced prosecution for the orgy of speculation and swindling that led to the financial collapse and Great Recession, and he personally intervened to block legislation capping

executive pay at bailed-out firms.”

“So when Clinton was hobnobbing with Goldman Sachs CEO Blankfein in 2013, while investigations of wrongdoing by Goldman and the other Wall Street banks were still ongoing, she was consorting with a man who belonged in prison.”

By Nick Beams14 January 2017

The year 2016 was characterised politically by the emergence of deep hostility to the official political and economic establishment as a result of rising social inequality. This was manifested most sharply in the Brexit vote in Britain and the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency, with right-wing nationalist forces being the main beneficiaries to date due to the reactionary anti-working class policies of what passes for the political “left.”

This shift has found expression in a warning sounded by the World Economic Forum, which hosts its annual gathering of world business and political leaders in Davos, Switzerland next week. The annual “risks report” prepared for the meeting concludes that the growing concentration of income and wealth at the very top of society is the biggest single risk to the stability of the economic and political order over which the millionaires and billionaires assembling in Davos preside. The report identifies “rising income and wealth inequality” as the most significant force driving global politics over the next decade.

The report cites the weakness of the economic “recovery” following the financial crisis of 2008 as one of the reasons for the anti-establishment backlash, but warns that boosting growth is not sufficient to shore up the credibility of the capitalist system.

There is a need to revive growth, “but the growing mood of anti-establishment populism suggests we may have passed the stage where this alone would remedy fractures in society: reforming market capitalism must also be added to the agenda,” the report states.

It continues: “The combination of economic inequality and political polarization threatens to amplify global risks, fraying the social solidarity on which the legitimacy of our economic and political systems rest.”

The report notes that the policy of quantitative easing by the world’s central banks—the pumping of trillions of dollars into the global financial system—has “exacerbated income inequality” by boosting “the returns enjoyed by the owners of financial assets, while workers’ real earnings have been growing very slowly.”

Productivity growth has been slow to recover from the crisis and structural rates of unemployment remain high, particularly among young people in Europe, while in the United States there has been a marked decline in the labour participation rate, signifying that large numbers of workers are dropping out of the workforce.

The report points out that “in contrast to the pre-crisis era, when China’s rapid expansion bolstered overall growth rates, there is no market game-changer on the horizon,” with China in a gradual slowdown as its economy moves away from investment-led growth.

“In sum, it is difficult to identify routes that will lead back to robust global rates of economic growth,” the Davos report concludes.

In line with other studies, the report points to rising inequality in the US, with the incomes of the top 1 percent rising by 31 percent between 2009 and 2012 compared to less than 0.5 percent for the rest of the population.

“Middle-class income stagnation,” it states, “is particularly affecting youth; recent research shows that 540 million young people across advanced economies face the prospect of growing up to be poorer than their parents.”

In examining longer-term trends, the report dwells on the impact of new technologies associated with the advance of computerisation and the Internet. According to one study it cites, some 47 percent of jobs in the United States are at risk from automation, affecting more than 80 percent of low-income work.

“Technology is also contributing to the changing nature of work, with secure and predictable jobs giving way to more sporadic and short-term self-employment,” with research suggesting that the number of people in so-called “alternative work arrangements” in the US increased faster than overall employment between 2005 and 2015.

In fact, the rate at which this is taking place is increasing. A recent study has found that 94 percent of the 10 million jobs created during the Obama administration were temporary, contract or part-time positions, with the proportion of the workforce engaged in such occupations rising from 10.7 percent to 15.8 percent. The number of full-time jobs today is 1 million below the level at the start of the recession.

The increased use of technology provides the material foundation for the advance of living standards. But under the profit system, it is the means for driving down the living standards of the mass of the population.

According to statistics prepared by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and cited in the World Economic Forum report, up to 80 percent of the decline in labour’s share in national income between 1990 and 2007 was the result of the impact of technology. This trend will only have accelerated in the past decade.

The report warns that one way in which technological change could prove disruptive is via the labour market, with incomes pushed down and unemployment pushed up in affected sectors and regions, leading to “disruptive” social conditions. This is in line with the overall finding of the report that “the most important of global risks is the pairing of unemployment and social instability.”

While pointing to the rise of populist and nationalist movements, the report does not offer much in the way of in-depth analysis. But it does at least indicate one of the most significant factors, noting that “the economic policies of historically mainstream parties from the right and the left have converged in recent decades,” making it possible for “once-fringe movements” to rise by “portraying the established parties as part of the same technocratic political class, focused on self-enrichment.”

The overriding fear of the World Economic Forum, though not stated explicitly in the report, is that popular opposition will shift to the left. As other commentators have noted in this, the centenary year of the Russian Revolution, there is a parallel between the conditions that prevailed a century ago and those of today.

Summing up its findings, the report concludes that it is a “febrile time for the world,” where “deep-rooted social and economic trends are manifesting themselves disruptively across the world,” and “persisting inequality, particularly in the context of comparative economic weakness, risks undermining the legitimacy of market capitalism.”

The World Economic Forum, which begins in the alpine resort of Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday, will involve the usual round of networking by business chiefs, political leaders and the heads of NGOs, as lucrative deals are made and relationships established. Of course, it will produce no solutions to the deepening social, political and economic malaise. How could it, as the forces gathered there preside over the very social order that has produced the crisis?

But for the global elites, the taste of the champagne, the delicacy of the canapés and the flavour of the haute cuisine may be somewhat tainted by the smell of death wafting up from the grave opening up before them.

The chief motivating factor behind the rise on Wall Street is the understanding that the incoming Trump administration will not only carry out policies to benefit the financial elites, but that responsibility for implementing this agenda will be in the hands of some its foremost representatives.

TRUMP VOWS TO KEEP OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERS LOOTING

MNUCHIN: THE FORECLOSURE MACHINE!

The FDIC paid OneWest $1 billion, which Stein said went to “billionaire investors … to cover the close of foreclosing on working class, everyday American folks.”

“But the bank came under fire for its foreclosure practices as housing advocacy groups accused it of being too quick to foreclose on struggling homeowners. In 2011, dozens of demonstrators descended on Mnuchin's $26.5 million home in he wealthy Bel Air neighborhood to protest OneWest's eviction tactics, according to the Los Angeles Times.”

TRUMP VOWS TO SERVE THE RICH WITH SUPER OBAMA-CLINTONIMCS!

There is a vast chasm between this empty populist rhetoric and the personnel that Trump has selected to populate his government. The speech followed a series of cabinet picks, including billionaire asset strippers, Wall Street bankers, and dedicated opponents of financial and corporate regulations, public education and Medicare and Medicaid, to lead the Treasury, Commerce, Education and Health and Human Services departments.

THE TWISTED ROAD TO REVOLUTION CAME DOWN WALL STREET

FIRST

OBAMA –CLINTONOMICS FOR THE SUPER RICH

"Between 2002 and 2015 annual earnings for the bottom 90 percent of Americans rose by only 4.5 percent, while earnings for the top 1 percent grew by 22.7 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Under the Obama administration, more than 90 percent of

income gains since the so-called “recovery” began have gone to the top one percent."

“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan THEAMERICAN THINKER.com

Eight men own same as poorest half of world: Oxfam

London (AFP) – Eight men own the same wealth as the poorest half of the world’s population, a level of inequality which “threatens to pull our societies apart”, Oxfam said on Monday ahead of the World Economic Forum opening in Davos.

The wealth of the world’s poorest 3.6 billion people is the equivalent to the combined net worth of six American businessmen, one from Spain and another from Mexico.

Oxfam pointed to a link between the vast gap between rich and poor and growing discontent with mainstream politics around the world.

“From Brexit to the success of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, a worrying rise in racism and the widespread disillusionment with mainstream politics, there are increasing signs that more and more people in rich countries are no longer willing to tolerate the status quo,” Oxfam said in its new report, “An economy for the 99 percent”.

The charity said new data on wealth distribution from countries such as India and China had prompted it to revise its own calculation, having said a year ago the wealth of half the world’s population was in the hands of 62 people.

Inequality will be among the issues topping the agenda as the world’s political and business elite meet in Davos from Tuesday until Friday, when 3,000 people will gather for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.

“Responsive and responsible leadership” has been chosen as the theme of the summit, which organisers said was a response to a “backlash against globalisation leading to two surprising vote results and a rise in populism in the West”.

In its report Oxfam called for an increase in tax rates targeting “rich individuals and cooperations”, as well as a global agreement to end competition between countries to lower corporate tax rates.

The charity also condemned lobbying by corporations and the closeness of business and politics, calling for mandatory public lobby registries and stronger rules on conflicts of interest.

"Food stamps have also become a major moneymaking market for some of America’s biggest banks."

"Profiting from poverty was apparently an 'important business' for JP Morgan."

Food Stamps: $1.3 Billion Spent on Junk Food, Soft Drinks, Says Study

AP

Americans use food stamps to buy more than $600 million worth of “sweetened beverages,” and bought hundreds of millions more of junk food and sugary snacks, according to a report published by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Overall, food stamps worth nearly $1.3 billion were spent on “sweetened drinks, desserts, salty snacks, candy, and sugar,” which accounted for about 20 cents of every dollar spent on food items purchased by 26.5 million households in 2011, saidthe report.

The USDA administers the $74 billion food stamp program, also known as SNAP or the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program.

The report compared spending patterns between SNAP and non-SNAP households and found that “sweetened beverages,” which includes fruit juices, energy drinks, and sweetened teas, accounted for nearly 10 percent of the total amount of money spent on food.

“In this sense, SNAP is a multibillion-dollar taxpayer subsidy of the soda industry,” Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York UniversitytoldtheNew York Times. “It’s pretty shocking.”

Overall, SNAP users spent 22.8 percent of their benefit on sugary drinks, desserts, salty snacks, candy, sugar, plus jams and sweets, and only 11.9 percent on fruits and vegetables. Families that don’t use the SNAP program spent 20 percent of their funds on those sweet items, and 16.3 percent on fruits and vegetables.

The multi-billion dollar, taxpayer funded food stamps program has become increasingly controversial thanks, in part, to itsmassive growthunder President Obama.

More than 10.7 million more Americans — a 32 percent jump — have become reliant on food stamps to feed themselves since Obama took office in 2009, according to data released by the Department of Agriculture (USDA).

And in that time, countless studies have been published and health experts have warned that restrictions are needed to curtail food stamp use to purchase unhealthy foods. Government watchdog groups have also called for tighter regulations as food stamp fraud remains a common and costly problem.

Food stamps have also become a major moneymaking market for some of America’s biggest banks.

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been made by a handful of banks that help the U.S. government process payments to food stamps recipients.

“Since 2004, 18 of 24 states who contract with J.P. Morgan to provide welfare benefits have contracted to pay $560,492,596.02,” theGAI investigationrevealed. “New York alone has a seven-year contract worth $126,394,917.”

Profiting from poverty was apparently an “important business” for JP Morgan.

“This business is a very important business to JP Morgan,” Christopher Paton, the company’s former managing director of treasury services,toldBloomberg News in 2011. “It’s an important business in terms of its size and scale. We also regard it as very important in the sense that we are delivering a very useful social function. We are a key part of this benefit delivery mechanism. Right now volumes have gone through the roof in the past couple of years or so … The good news from JP Morgan’s perspective is the infrastructure that we built has been able to cope with that increase in volume.”

The president-elect has indicated that he wants to make cuts to various welfare programs and the Republican platform promises to separate the food stamps program from the Farm Bill, where SNAP funding is currently derived.

January 16, 2017

Requiem for a Lightweight: Obama Out

January 16, 2017

Requiem for a Lightweight: Obama Out

Critics often make for strange bedfellows. LouisFarrakhanand CornellWestare examples. Both argue that Barack Obama was not ready for prime time. For Farrakhan, Obama failed on race and social issues. For West, the 44th president was a sell-out to a capitalist establishment. Overall, both say the Obamas didn't do much for blacks in particular and social justice in general. For brothers like Farrakhan and West, the last eight years were a wasted opportunity.

Buyer's remorse may be the new "hope and change."

There will be a black president one day – maybe not for decades, thanks to the outgoing regime. Obama had little time for pragmatism and too much to do with special pleading; identity politics; and feckless, if not sanguinary, foreign policy.

Be it race or religion, Obama's tragic flaw was policy marked by timidity and moral ambiguity – both underwritten by the belief that he could be a racial, religious, or policy shape-shifter as the occasion demanded. Having parents on both sides of racial and religious divides allowed Obama toplay raceand religious cards often, yet seldom well.

As team Obama heads for the exits, the race joker is again in play. White working-class Americans and any flavor of Russians are the new bogymen for bad losers, right and left, across the land.

In the twilight of a checkered political career, Obama's only claim to legacy might be "first black," a dubious attribute that can never be more than a half-truth. Half- truths might be a fitting coda to an era that may go down in history as a tipping point, a juncture where "fake news" became the real news. Factual ambiguity is now viral and that cultural meme is a precedent that Obama owns.

As a young hipster in exclusive white schools, he was "Barry," not Barack Hussein. As a Chicago politician, Obama self-identified as a black man, although that identity was more expedient than real. As a presidential candidate, Obama often ignored his African and Muslim antecedents while celebrating his heroic American whitegrandparents.

In mid-career, with a media assist, he jettisoned the "Hussein" moniker. Clearly, it wasn't politically expedient to self-identify as black and Muslim, even in Farrakhan's Chicago.

Barack's father was an unfortunate stereotype, a deadbeat dad who abandoned his son and fled to a life of substance abuse in Africa. Obama's mother seemed to be a white flower child with a taste for exotic, if not constant, mates. Ultimately, Obama spent his formative years in the custody of white privilege and grandparents in Hawaii. To this day, the black and Muslim sides of family Obama languish inKenyanand Indonesian poverty and obscurity.

In the main, the president's personal career path was consistent snowflake: prep school, Ivy League college, prestigious law school, and then politics. At the curb level, Barack Obama probably cared as much about black culture in America as does Chris Matthews.

After 20 January, the Obamas plan toremainin Washington so that their daughter can remain in a pricey, majority-white private secondary school. Self-segregatingpublic schoolsin Washington, D.C. are a function of entrenched double standards among elite black liberals like the Obamas. Arguably, the District of Columbia has theworstpublic schools in America.

Withal, you could argue that the "great black hope" was neither. In life and theater, the last act is often like the first – bookends, if you will.

The Obama Bookends

Obama leaves the Oval Office as did the Clintons,trashingthe White House. Since the election, both families have done their level best to poison domestic and foreign policy wells. First, there is challenging the legitimacy of the 2016 election at home and then blaming the Trump victory on white fright or Russian meddling abroad.

Sour grapes do not capture the stench of such 11th-hour hypocrisy. And "sore loser" does not begin to describe the perfidy of American intelligencecollaborationin the partisan challenges to the legitimacy of the 2016 election.

Eight years of Obama torpor had nothing to do with the Clinton defeat?

If the Kremlin hacked the DNC attempt to hijack the Democrat primaries, such enterprise is a tribute to an efficient FSB or GRU. Worse still, if there was a hack, and subsequentdesinformatsiyacampaign in America, any Kremlin scam is a testament to the manifest incompetence of the DNC and General Clapper'sbloatedAmerican intelligence megaplex.

The truth about the intelligence profession today is alarming. The grand illusion in Congress about 16 U.S. intelligence agencies is the belief that spending is somehow related to performance. Since 9/11, the business of the I.C. is clearly business, not efficiency, effectiveness, or improved national security.

The intelligence community took sides in the recent election because it anticipated a Clinton win. Trump is a clear threat to business as usual at DOD and a clear threat to an obese and out-of-control intelligencebehemoth.

When the media speaks of weaponized cyber-attacks, the American sponsored "Stuxnet"assaulton Iran's nuclear infrastructure is seldom mentioned. U.S. intelligence fired the first salvo of the 21st-century internet wars as early as January 2010. Any hack of the DNC is small potatoes compared to the Obama-Clapper idiocy of playing nuclear chicken in a dicey neighborhood like the Levant.

Bottom line: A Shia bomb is still waiting in the wings.

Beginning with the Sunni attack on Manhattan, intelligence communityfundinghas been inversely proportionate to national security performance. Indeed, regime change chickens have now come home to roostinsidethe Beltway.

Opposition to Trump in D.C. is now flirting with sedition.

The latest "Russian" hysteria has all the earmarks of xenophobia, vindictive remorse, or political vendetta. General Clapper's empire bet on Obama and the Clintons. Trump won in spite of Washington fixers. Real change is a bitter pill for losers and elites alike.

The best revenge is often blowback. Barack Obama and Jim Clapper have managed to turn Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, and Edward Snowden into global cyber-heroes.

Clapper and his agency vassals might now displace both Benedict Arnold and Rube Goldberg on the partisan political walk of shame. If Russian intelligence is more effective than American intelligence, Putin might indeed take a bow, but surely Donald Trump is not the culprit, nor the beneficiary.

Obama leaves the Oval Office as he entered, festooned with garlands from sycophants. The president got the Nobel "Peace" Prize at the start of his run when he had done nothing. Now he gets the "Defense" Distinguished Service Medal after accomplishing little. Both awards are bookends for wishful thinking. Eight years of Obama were neither distinguished nor a service.

Obama probably killed, with Islamic allies, more Muslims than CharlesMartel. Mister Obama also leaves his successor at least five hot wars in theummahand one cold war in Europe. No fair analyst can possibly argue that America and the world are better, or safer, places after the Obama years.

Nearly a decade ago, Obama ran on a theme of "hope and change" as if he had a program for either. Recent events in Chicago are a microcosm of domestic failure on both counts. We could start with the Black Lives Matter hustle, a coalition of greedylawyers, hip-hop, rap, andanti-coppunk activists.

Apologists might argue that Chicago is not Obama's problem, but if urban punk pathology is a national problem, then that buck stops on Obama's desk.

Chicago is Obama country – his nascent political constituency, if you will. The Windy City is a burg where lives do not matter, especially black lives. Chicago isthe murder capitalof America, a city where victims are usually black, and perps are almost always black, too.

In any given year, nearly five thousand of Mr. Obama's Illinois constituents will be maimed by criminals and a fifth of those usually end up dead. Black mayhem isroutinein every American city, most of which are one-party towns like Chicago and Washington, D.C., hostages to a smug and complacent Democratic Party.

Chronic, now generational, violence in the United States is a phenomenon of the urban American Left. Obama and his Party own that demographic.

The most recent racial atrocity in Chicago featured four punks who kidnapped a mentally challenged white man for two days of racial abuse and ritual torture. The ordeal was live-streamed on YouTube. The only difference between this incident and everyday city mayhem is that this victim was white.

Social pathology in places like Chicago is of a piece with Islamic necrosis abroad, a product of indulgence. Tolerating aberrant behavior anywhere makes more of it possible everywhere.

Culture is behavior. Behavior is culture.

Maybe it is too early to suggest that Barack Hussein Obama is America's first affirmative action president. Buyer's remorse is the ugly side of affirmative action. If facts and performance matter, Obama had eight years of golden opportunity to address domestic and foreign policy civility. Alas, he did little or nothing on both accounts. Both landscapes now are literally littered with body bags and the human detritus of civic incontinence.

Barack Obama was never varsity material.

Indeed, he doubled down on failure. Obama never used his bully pulpit todemanda better moral standard for his core urban constituency at home or those perfidious Muslim "partners" he sought toappeaseabroad.

Obama's tenure is not without merit. He looks good in a suit. Just ask CNN or MSNBC. He seems to have a nice family, too. And Barack'srapis nonpareil.

Indeed, Obama sounds like a park bench preacher. He's arrogant enough to tell a crowd to go to hell, and most marks would get in line for the trip. The Obama aura for folks who work for a living; however, people in flyover country is something very different. If you ask about Obama in Deer Lick, the response would be "all hat, no cowboy."

The black vote in America may continue to be a "blue wall," a racial monolith – or maybe now with Keith Ellison, just another round of domesticjihad. Yet for the rest of America, any future appeals to melanin as an asset, religion as an excuse, or affirmative action as a remedy may be dead letters.

January 14, 2017

The Strange Saga of Osama and Obama

They are the two men who changed the course of the history of the United States and the world in the new millennium: one by his capacity for evil, the other by his incapacity to comprehend it. The saga of Osama and Obama begins at the dawn of the 21st century.

In September of 2001, Osama bin Laden slaughtered thousands of Americans in New York, Washington, and in the skies, undermining the nation's sense of security. The Twin Towers were a symbol of the soaring power of the unchallenged United States following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Osama didn't have to leave his Afghan hideaway to accomplish his "feat." He sent no clunky missiles in an effort to dent the impenetrable power of fortress America as Saddam Hussein had attempted with his Scuds against U.S. troops during the Gulf War. He relied on a small group of Muslim fanatics with box cutters and the schedules of U.S. airlines servicing a booming economy.

In response to bin Laden’s outrage, then President George W. Bush launched the War on Terror. In 2008, Americans chose Barack Hussein Obama to be their first post-9/11 elected president. That his surname, Obama, rhymed with Osama and had the unusual names “Barack Hussein" attached to it is only a coincidence. The resemblance, however, was not lost on the future president when he lunched with a political consultant in late September of 2001. Before them was a newspaper with Osama bin Laden's photo. "Hell of a thing isn't it?"remarked the consultant. "Really bad luck. You can't change your name, of course. Voters are suspicious of that kind of thing."

Voters seemed to be more suspicious of Obama’s association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whom theWall Street Journalcalleda "passionate proponent of the view of America as the world's leading agent of evil and injustice,” than his Muslim roots. The association with fiery preacher and his friendship withdomestic terroristBill Ayers did not deter the American people.

Perhaps Barack Hussein Obama’s amazing rise was the result of some deep wound in the American psyche after such a direct hit on its pride that still smarted seven years later.

On May 2, 2011, Obama killed Osama, or at least he took responsibility for the action, while watching it on closed-circuit deep in the heavily-fortified White House Situation Room -- but his incapacity to call out evil during his presidency weakened America's power in the world and gave birth to an even more malicious Al-Qaeda offspring -- the Islamic State.

“Like most children of divorced parents, he felt a loss, for he was no longer as intimately involved with his father’s family… he keenly felt his lack of status, genuinely suffering from his father’s lack of personal love and care.” These words werewritten by Omar bin Laden, one of Osama’s 20 sons, regarding his father's relationship with his grandfather, but they could have easily been written about Barack Obama, whose autobiography, titledDreams from My Father, aptly describes the importance of his Kenyan progenitor's absence. Both men’s Muslim fathers died prematurely: Osama’s in a plane crash at age 59, Obama’s in a car accident at age 46, thus precluding any reconciliation with their feelings of abandonment.

Osama bin Laden’s father was fantastically rich and had many wives. Since Osama was not among the first born among 50 sons, he received little attention from the busy patriarch before he died. He was raised by a stepfather. Unlike his brothers, who studied abroad, Osama stayed in Saudi Arabia and thus remained “themost provincialof the bin-Laden boys.”

Barack Obama was raised in multicultural Hawaii andin Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim nation. It was with Obama’s Indonesian stepfather that the future president first came in contact with Islam, at the time in Indonesia, a much more tolerant version than that of Osama’s Saudi Arabia.

Bin Laden, living in the birthplace of Islam, found meaning in its message and gravitated towards the works of Sayid Qutub, “widely consideredthe father of contemporary jihadist thought.”

Four and a half years younger than Osama, Barack Obama was drawn to the writings of Malcom X of the Nation of Islam, a black nationalist group that prepared for a race war in America and believed that Christianity was the religion of slavers. Malcolm eventually left the NOI for the more traditional Sunni form of the religion and made the Hadj to Mecca. Obama wrote:

If Malcolm X's discovery toward the end of his life, that some whites might live beside him as brothers in Islam, seemed to offer some hope of eventual reconciliation, that hope appeared in a distant future, in a far-off land. In the meantime, I looked to see where the people would come from who were willing to work toward this future and populate this new world.

That search led Obama to a hybrid multicultural and polyreligious concept of world harmony that included an idyllic image of Islam based on his formative years in Indonesia and his emotional attachment to his Muslim forbears. Forhis “vision,”the president won the Nobel Peace Prize shortly after taking office and spent the next eight years trying to create it. He failed miserably, further undermining the post-World War II order that Osama Bin Laden’s atrocity had shaken.

The youthful quests of these twohighly educated, self-confident men led them to two opposing views of Islam. Bin-Laden's followed the literal words of the Quran: only all-out war on the unbelievers would bring the peace of Islam to the world. For Obama, Islam was a religion of peace. Later it became his "responsibilityas President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear."

Osama became an evil man of action -- Obama an immoral man of inaction.

Osama, with few troops, no country, and no official title,declared waron the world's greatest superpower in 1996 andtook action: the Khobar towers, the USS Cole, the U.S. embassies in Africa, the WTC, and many more acts of terror.

Obama, commander in chief of the world's most powerful military, did everything to appease America's enemies: the withdrawal of troops from Iraq which led to the rise of ISIS, his failure to act when Syria's Assad crossed his red line of chemical weapons use, the nuclear deal with Iran, and many more acts of rendition.

Osama always told the truth about his beliefs -- Obama told half-truths and lies about Islam.

On each other’s civilizations:

Osama: It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind.

Obama: As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam.

On religious pluralism:

Osama: The religion of Jihad in the way of Allah [is] so that Allah's Word and religion reign Supreme. It is to this religion that we call you: the seal of all the previous religions.

Obama: The world must continue to lift up the voices of Muslim clerics and scholars who teach the true peaceful nature of Islam.

On war and peace:

Osama: Do not await anything from us but Jihad, resistance and revenge.

Obama: Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism – it is an important part of promoting peace.

President Obama told the world "that Islam has always been a part of America's story." In fact, thefirst country to declare waron the United States was Muslim Tripoli. Following the early conflicts with the North African Barbary States, historian Bernard Lewis wrote (The Crises of Islam, p.69)that there was little contact between the two civilizations until the post-WW II oil boom.

The United States is now in a third historical phase of interaction with the Muslim world. We have been savagely attacked by "Radical Islam," a phrase Barack Obama refuses to utter, while being besieged by Muslim propaganda. By taking an active role in the latter and by failing to decisively combat evil, Barack Hussein Obama has advanced the cause of Osama Bin Laden. Yes, the president "killed" one mass murderer, but he has enabled the formation of tens of thousands of ghoulish assassins who believe that it is their religious duty to enslave non-Muslim women and who can look an infidel in the face before slowly slicing off his head.

The author is a “self-made multiculturalist” who has lived and worked in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. He blogs atThe Multicultural Conservative: Conservative by Nature – Multicultural by Choice.

CRONY BANKSTER LOOTING OF AMERICA

THEIR GOLDEN AGE OF PLUNDER IS NOT OVER!

NO PRESIDENT IN HISTORY SUCKED IN MORE BRIBES FROM BANKSTERS NOR INFESTED HIS ADMIN WITH BANKSTER CRONIES MORE THAN OBAMA!

*

And while the Obama administration worked systematically

to bail out the banks and make the financial oligarchy richer

than ever, shielding the architects of the Great Recession

from criminal prosecution, it did impose fines for some of the

banks’ grossest swindles, including the sale of worthless

subprime mortgage-backed securities, the rigging of key

global interest rates such as the London Interbank Offered

Rate (Libor), drug money laundering, illegal home

foreclosures and other illicit activities.

"Hardly a week goes by without a new report on signs of extreme social crisis or ever-more obscene levels of wealth among the financial elite. "

Obama’ farewell address: One last round of clichés and lies

By Niles Niemuth11 January 2017

President Barack Obama capped his eight years in office with a vacuous and hypocritical farewell address Tuesday night delivered at the McCormick Place convention center in downtown Chicago.

The first-ever presidential farewell address delivered outside of Washington, DC had the atmospherics of an overblown, cheap spectacle. Obama strode onto the stage like a rock star, flanked by oversized American flags, a massive illuminated presidential seal and an introductory soundtrack by the rock band U2.

As with every address Obama has delivered over the last eight years, his speech in Chicago was full of clichés, his rhetoric padded with empty phrases and delivered with a false gravitas, signaled by his trademark pursed lips and affected whisper.

The speech was rife with contradictions, the starkest being the juxtaposition of Obama’s boasting of the great social progress achieved by his administration and his warning of threats to American democracy arising from ever-growing social inequality and economic insecurity.

The president declared: “If I had told you eight years ago that America would reverse a great recession, reboot our auto industry, and unleash the longest stretch of job creation in our history… if I had told you that we would open up a new chapter with the Cuban people, shut down Iran’s nuclear weapons program without firing a shot, and take out the mastermind of 9/11… if I had told you that we would win marriage equality, and secure the right to health insurance for another 20 million of our fellow citizens—you might have said our sights were set a little too high.

“By almost every measure, America is a better, stronger place than it was when we started.”

He made no attempt to explain why, given this impressive record of social progress and foreign policy success, his party was routed in the elections and the billionaire demagogue Donald Trump was preparing to succeed him in the White House.

A basic component of the answer, of course, is the grotesquely false rendering of his record and the state of American society as he leaves office. Hardly a week goes by without a new report on signs of extreme social crisis or ever-more obscene levels of wealth among the financial elite. Just in the past month, studies have been published showing the first decline in US life expectancy in 23 years, plunging pay for young adults, a 72 percent surge in deaths from synthetic opioids, and home ownership rates at historic lows for young people.

Other surveys have documented a $237 billion increase in the wealth of the world’s richest 200 billionaires, driven largely by the US stock market boom under Obama, and an acceleration of the transfer of wealth from the bottom half of the US population for the top one percent.

In boasting of presiding over a record number of consecutive monthly job increases, Obama neglected to mention that 94 percent of the new jobs created in the last eight years have been either part-time or temporary.

Noticeably absent from Obama’s remarks was any mention of the social conditions in the city where he was speaking, which is ravaged by high levels of poverty and unemployment, an epidemic of police killings and violence, and a skyrocketing homicide rate.

He lamented in general terms the growth of social inequality and the dangers it poses to American democracy—that is, the threat of a social explosion in the United States.

“While the top one percent has amassed a bigger share of wealth and income, too many families, in inner cities and rural counties, have been left behind—the laid-off factory worker; the waitress and health care worker who struggle to pay the bills—convinced that the game is fixed against them, that their government only serves the interests of the powerful—a recipe for more cynicism and polarization in our politics.”

As always, he spoke as if none of these social ills had anything to do with the policies pursued by his administration, including severe cuts in social spending on the one side and the bailout of the banks and flooding of money into the stock market on the other.

Another piece of monumental hypocrisy was Obama’s pose of fighting to defend democracy when he has done more to destroy it than perhaps any other US president.

“Democracy can buckle when we give in to fear,” he declared. “So just as we, as citizens, must remain vigilant against external aggression, we must guard against a weakening of the values that make us who we are. That’s why, for the past eight years, I’ve worked to put the fight against terrorism on a firm legal footing. That’s why we’ve ended torture, worked to close Gitmo, and reform our laws governing surveillance to protect privacy and civil liberties.”

This is from a president who has personally authorized the assassination of American citizens and thousands of others around the world with drones-fired missiles, protected and promoted those in the CIA responsible for torture, kept the prison at Guantanamo Bay open, persecuted journalists and jailed whistleblowers, militarized the police, and expanded the illegal surveillance of electronic communications.

Obama also used his farewell address take parting shots at Russia and China, lumping the war against ISIS with efforts to counter both countries, and arguing that aggressive action against the world’s second- and third-largest nuclear-armed powers was the only way to avoid war.

“[T]he fight against extremism and intolerance and sectarianism are of a piece with the fight against authoritarianism and nationalist aggression,” he said. “If the scope of freedom and respect for the rule of law shrinks around the world, the likelihood of war within and between nations increases, and our own freedoms will eventually be threatened.”

Obama spent his eight years in office waging war abroad and war on the working class at home. With Tuesday’s speech, he passed the reigns to Trump with a shrug.

"Populism is basically a system wherein people of all classes and creeds, from the bottom up and not the top down, secure their share in the economic pie and are therefore ensured upward mobility in alliance with secure voting rights and the ability to effect change, while having the freedom to preserve their property—and their family, community, and ethnic-national heritage—without undue “political correctness” fouling up the works. In its purest form, populism opposes business monopolies and vaguely defined free-market ideologies, especially predatory banking, and therefore seeks an economic democracy. It’s not precisely right-wing, nor is it left-wing."DREADING DE-GLOBALIZATION IN DAVOS

Corporate executives, top bankers, global speculators, and power brokers at the annual Alpine retreat in Davos, Switzerland are complaining openly that the rise of populism and nationalism across the United State and Europe is a serious threat to globalism and the New World Order. Ending globalization is apparently hitting them in the pocketbook.

By Mark Anderson

Many of the gilded glitterati gathering in Davos, Switzerland amid the towering Alps for the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) see the populism sweeping much of the world as a fascinating trend. They certainly enjoy talking about it. But their academic chitter-chatter is starting to take on apanicked tone over the implications of the common man demanding a better life—a life without poverty in the face of plenty and without nonstop unwinnable wars, among othervexing problems.

Even before this year’s WEF started on Jan. 17, American public television personality Charlie Rose—a frequent attendee of the much more exclusive Bilderberg meetings that AFP has doggedly covered since 1975—was interviewing several guests about this topic on his well-known talk show, as this AFP reporter flipped on the TV during recent travels. Rose’s esteemed guests fretted over several trends that suggest there’s a devolution from globalism in the works—call it “de-globalization.”

Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haas and Chicago Council on Global Affairs President Ivo Daalder in early December 2016 confided to Rose that they’ve got the jitters over the current populist surge, most visibly represented by brash businessman Donald J. Trump’s ascent to the presidency—and above all by what his election says about the worldview of a sizable cross section of the American people. Simply put: Globalization is losing its grip on the human psyche.

Daalder feebly tried to say that largely unregulated “integration” is the Western “tradition,” without mentioning that the kind of forcible integration that’s taking place—largely due to wars waged by Western powers that force people out of their homelands and into places they wouldn’t otherwise live, in most cases—creates cultural clashes, crime, and upheaval. This could all be avoided if world government promoters would chill out on trying to mold the world according to their portfolios and to their impractical, sometimes demented visions of world governance.

Rock band U2’s vocalist, Bono, and Ian Brenner of the Eurasia Group were among other guests on Rose’s show in early January. They, too, greeted the populist revival with a mix of fascination and barely muted alarm.

BLOG: BEHIND GLOBALISM IS OPEN BORDERS, AMNESTY OR CONTINUED NON-ENFORCEMENT, NO E-VERIFY AND NO LEGAL NEED APPLY.... It's all about keeping wages DEPRESSED!

So, silver-spoon WEF attendees—and the likeminded corporate media that usually does their bidding—are acknowledging more than ever before that populism is undermining what’s typically called globalism. This is the credo practiced by those who want to knit the world into a singular economic-political-cultural construct lacking the rich and varied landscape that can only be produced by a world of distinct nation-states with unique cultures.

In other words, if money can’t buy you true love, perhaps it also cannot ultimately buy total world-rule, either, because there’s something in human nature that naturally rejects a mechanistic existence that lacks heart and soul and a real sense of heritage.

This doesn’t mean, though, that those bent on world-rule are about to flatline. The private, usurious central banking system that stole the people’s credit and put everyone’s land and labor in hock is their chief weapon. Without it, their press control would shrivel and the rest of their influence would wane to, or almost to, the breaking point. But at least real freedom-seekers know that key monetary and financial reforms of the proper sort are the core pathway to ending the “new world order.”

TOUGH ADMISSIONS IN THE TIMES

“Davos Glitter in the Gloom of Populism” topped the front page of the Jan. 17 New York Times on the first day of the WEF, which runs through Jan. 20, the day of Trump’s inauguration as the 45th U.S. president—the first one ever so clearly defined as a “populist.” The Times sub-headline added: “Elites grapple with working-class rage.”

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

The article itself noted that the 2017 WEF attendees included Bilderbergers like International Monetary Fund head Christine Lagarde and Microsoft co-founder-turned-“philanthropist” Bill Gates, along with smug mattoids like JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon and film stars like Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie. Also attending this year’s Davos event is Chinese president Xi Jinping, who reportedly stated that populism, defined as “support for the concerns of ordinary people,” is seen as a threat to globalism.

Populism is basically a system wherein people of all classes and creeds, from the bottom up and not the top down, secure their share in the economic pie and are therefore ensured upward mobility in alliance with secure voting rights and the ability to effect change, while having the freedom to preserve their property—and their family, community, and ethnic-national heritage—without undue “political correctness” fouling up the works. In its purest form, populism opposes business monopolies and vaguely defined free-market ideologies, especially predatory banking, and therefore seeks an economic democracy. It’s not precisely right-wing, nor is it left-wing.

The above-noted Times article succumbed to the realization that the elites’ long-sought notion of world government may be fundamentally doomed.

Each year, the WEF crowd talks (mainly on the basis of global investment-class perspectives) about their typical topics of climate change, inequality, and the economic challenges facing developing and emerging nations. But, as the Times continued, “Missing from these high-minded conversations have been meaningful challengers or critics of the underlying theme that was seemingly stipulated from the birth of this (WEF) 46 years ago: Globalization has the potential to benefit everyone.”

Of particular note, the Times piece quoted economist John Mauldin as saying: “Trump’s election victory is a clear indication that the majority of people are not interested in a world government, but want to return to a classical local democracy. Strange as it may seem to the Davos men, most people tend to love their ‘patria,’ the land of their fathers.”

This is not to say that all WEF attendees are deluded power-mongers or vain pseudo-intellectuals. Many have considerable expertise in various fields and clearly have some worthwhile perspectives and ideas to share, especially in the technological realm. Their problem, however, is philosophical, not intellectual.

Several other recent headlines from big media outlets similarly represent the same basic admission by the plutocratic oligarchy (rule by the rich few who constitute “the establishment”) that they are on particularly shaky ground due to the populist tremors emanating from recent events including the pending Trump presidency, the June 23, 2016 affirmative “Brexit” vote that, if fully consummated, would allow the UK to officially exit the European Union, from the prospect of noted populist candidate Marie Le Pen gaining even more political ground in France, and so on.

Mark Anderson is AFP’s roving editor and has covered the last few Bilderberg gatherings since the death of James P. Tucker Jr.